85 Responses to Rudd’s comeback

My favourite quote from the Ruddster: “I cannot, for one, stand idly by and watch Mr Abbott try to slide into office by default..” Stand? Didn’t he notice that his maaates had cut him off at the knees? And don’t we love his opinion that “Mr Abbott is simply not up to the job”. What, because the Ruddbot was? Crazy talk.

Rudd’s comments are amusing for two reasons. The first is the implication that, without Rudd, Gillard is unable to defeat Abbott; in other words, she’s “not up to the job” of PM. The second is, of course, that he himself stood “idly by and watched” Ms Gillard “slide” into the office of PM by default.

Can they really think that the presence of Rudd’s rotting political corpse over the next two weeks can rescue their political campaign?

Steve now loves Kev again. A few days ago, he was mocking him. But anything ALP HQ says is true, isn’t it, Steve?

Rudd’s turn yesterday was hilarious. Two flags in the background, an authority-boosting lectern in front. We now have the bizarre situation of a prime minister and a co-prime minister. (I’m not sure which is which). Even more amusing was a man who slid into office in 2007 with no scrutiny whatsoever joining forces with a prime minister who stabbed him in the back on the say-so of secret backroom controllers – both criticising Tony Abbott for a sneak campaign. Even Paul Kelly calls it a “sham”.

Meanwhile, JoHo states the bleedingly obvious: The Fake Real Julia “has been a total failure… an even bigger failure than her predecessor.” And this: “real people don’t need to say that they’re real”.”

No, but the weird State of Queensland seemed to, and it’s hard to see how his supportive reappearance of Gillard is going to hurt here.

I can’t imagine they’d enjoyed continually recalling his demise and witnessing the reduction of a former PM to a Labor lapdog for electoral purposes is going to play well there; I mean, Queenslanders who vote Labor must have some self-respect.

This is the most entertaining election I can remember. The Labor campaign is a shambles… and yet, there’s still a chance they can win (which makes it all the more exciting – we don’t want them “giving up” – that would end the fun)

And even if she wins, she’s got Rudd the hero hanging around. It seems he actually thinks he can be PM again.

The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
Large Man with Dead Body: Here’s one.
The Dead Collector: That’ll be ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There’s your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not dead.
The Dead Collector: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not.
The Dead Collector: He isn’t.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m getting better.

That’s the way The Australian spun it this morning. Rudd is extraordinary. He’s by now demonstrated that he is entirely oblivious to everyone else on the planet. The honourable thing to do would have been to resign. And if he stays he should shut up and buckle under. But his attitude is: if I can’t ride the bike no-one can.

Far out! What a monster.

Having the prime minister replaced less than six months before an election and getting away with it is a remarkable feat of technocratic skill. If anyone in the party thinks they can get away with Rudd actually coming back they’re bonkers.

And what have Kevvie and his collaborators, the Machine Men who make the robots, done for Australia and the ALP’s cause. For the former he’s made us a debtor nation which could be justified if it wasn’t such a pig’s trough schemozzle. For the latter he’s created an ideological black hole that will make the Menzies years seem like salad days.

And for both he’s accomplished the re-election of the a mediocre shadow of John Howard perpetually with years of ineffective and divided opposition. The difference between now and the 50s is now we need a real leader who actually knows what’s going on and what to do about it. Such a person will be found nowhere near Canberra.

Contrary to what you argue Steve, Labor disunity has been so evident of late, and so persistent, that I don’t think people will buy the ‘new’ message of Labor unity. Most will probably just assume they’re keeping it under wraps for the rest of the election campaign (assuming that no more leaks/fights, etc, do break out.) Rudd’s presence may simply remind people of the recent fights.

Labor has an ad that says Abbott will “destroy the broadband network.” I know a person who doesn’t follow politics at all, who I use as a gauge of general public perceptions. She wanted to know why Abbott wanted to take people’s broadband away. That wasn’t fair!
I told her that he wasn’t going to be ripping up cables from the ground or anything like that. Existing internet wasn’t under threat. He would simply cancel a grandiose scheme to spend $5000 to connect high speed broadband to everyone’s house (whether or not they already had the internet).
“That’s insanse!” she said when the NBN was explained to her.

Senator Minchin wishes to record his dissent from the committee’s statements that it believes cigarettes are addictive and that passive smoking causes a number of adverse health effects for non-smokers.

At that rate in 30 years times he’ll agree he was wrong about climate too, except they’ll be nothing to be done about it.

Do they really think that the man the electors hate as much as the PM is going to save this shambles of a government? It’s hilarious. They tell us he’s crap, find out his replacement is crap and then expect us to believe that together they are wonderful.

Passive smoking hysteria is indeed mostly bullshit. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to buy themselves a chemical suit when they walk down a busy street, inhaling poisons by the litre. Which, of course, they don’t.

Will Julia be resurrecting Churchill next? Leave the dead to bury the dead, a very wise man once said……… Let’s get this election over and done with and begin moving Australia forward once again. Right now I feel it is stagnating in a cemetery somewhere.

Not sure what’s happening over East but advertising would be running 5 to 1 in the ALP’s favour in the wild west. I’ve seen and heard more anti-mining tax ads than Coalition ads. If they’re spending that much over here, where they’re as popular as a pork chop in a mosque, they must be spending a motsa over east.

Can’t say, Tiger. I’m never au courant with the party ads at election time because I don’t watch television. Bolt said the other day that the LNP had a very limited budget compared to Labor/ACTU/Greens and are probably keeping their powder dry for the home straight.

You must leave now take what you need, as we put Labor last
Whatever votes you want you better buy them fast
Tony’s got you running to the Krudd
As all admit you’re campaign’s been a dud.
Look out the Libs are coming through.
It’s all over now Baby Blue

I just had lunch with a mate who is a big wig in one of the most militant unions in the country. He still identifies as a communist, and is committed to the class struggle. He would cheer if every Coalition MP were to die in a fiery plane crash.

He said, “yep Dolly Downer said on the most perceptive things of the decade. Rudd is a really fucking awful person, and a little weasel c*** to boot.”

All your seasick reffos are rowing here
You empty-handed bludgers are all coming here
the lover that just made up your hair
is no asset to Advance Australia fair
The polls it seems moving awy from you
And it’s all over now Baby Blue

No. She’s fucked up too. Big time. The whole ‘fake Julia’ schtick is spot on. She’s been listening to her PR nerds who’ve identified concerns about her single/no kids status and decided to give her a personality makeover. So she’s been turning on the maternal schmooze.

It’s bollocks and people know it. If she’d just acted like the hard-nosed career bitch she is I reckon she’d a got further.

How did Tony Abbott make his own luck? He couldn’t’ve sparked off the leaks. He merely exploited the climate change division in his own arty to skewer Turnbull. I haven’t seen anything coming from the guy but LPA born to rule maxims and Howardian sloganeering.

I can’t exactly see what he’s done but stand still while the ALP implode but I’m sure you’re right.

He hasn’t stood still. He’s fought the government vigorously on several fronts, starting with climate change policy. However it’s true that Labor’s woes are, in part, self-inflicted wounds.
When that’s going on, the right thing to do is “stand still.”
Maybe part of being a good opposition leader is knowing when to stand still, and knowing when to advance.

Hawke and Whitlam had the most ingrained ‘born to rule’ mentality in recent history. Both were told by their mummies and daddies that being Prime Minister was their destiny.

She should have been herself right from the get-go.

Oh, please. If only the Fuhrer knew. She was herself from the get-go. A robotic, painful, intellectually sluggish twit whose much-hyped capacity for quick wits hasn’t translated from the Speaker-protected la-la land of Question Time to the real world.

That is correct on Hawke and Whitlam, but wrong on Gillard. My take is that she was genuinely shocked at becoming PM so soon that she hadn’t really thought hard about her PM persona. I think she panicked a bit, and so turned herself over the machine men.

The ALP campaign is a shambles. The ‘undead’ Kevin Rudd, standing on a podium with Australian flags behind him, announcing that he’ll be back campaigning?

What a non-story. Gillard has lost control of events. Rudd has leaked and wormed his way back into the limelight. And it’s all Julia’s fault for leaving an immense policy vacuum into which all sorts of irrelevant garbage has fallen. Her earlobes? Kev’s gall bladder? For god’s sake.

Kev is no doubt setting himself up with a platform, from which he can say ‘I won the election for you Julia, and I’d like to choose my portfolio.’ From where, of course, he’ll begin plotting again.

I think you miss the point. Tony Abbott has spent the last 15 years building a persona in politics. It is a persona that drives the ALP mad. They are spooked by him. He’s the kind of guy that annoyed them in High School: he was smarter than them and could play sport well.

Now all he has to do is be himself and the poor old ALP can’t take it. They keep saying to themselves “this guy is so stupid and neanderthal, he can’t beat us” Yet somehow he cotinues to outplay them at every turn by turning their ow fears against them.

The ALPers dismissed Abbott for so long, they couldn’t take him seriously. Now he is ripping their guts out, just by being himself. And they have no answer to it.

Yes, it has been a masterful performance. You won’t hear it from the press gallery, but in just eight months he has unified a divided party that was copping a drubbing, given it heart and brought it within striking distance.

Steady, RL, old son. You tend to belong to the Homer/Chris Sheil school of Field of Dreams psephology – if you say it, it will come. The race is wide open and Peter may well collect on that bet. We’ll see.

I know Gillard has long planned becoming PM. And you’re right, she would have planned and fantasized. But I bet she never thought in a million years it would take 24 hours only 2 months out from an election, where she would effectively assassinate a first term PM, and 15 minutes after that 24 hours have to hold a news conference both differentiating herself from a PM whose policies she overwhelmingly supported, but finding herself snookered in not being to enjoy the halo effect of association with that PM’s perceived policy successes.

This is one script she never fantasized about, let alone composed, let alone memorized.

Given the move came from the backbench and cognate ALP forces based on specific polling data on specific issues, she felt trapped, a bit confused, and highly unlikely to be able to gaily extemporize the ballsy ascension to the top job her 3 years of planning and fantasizing had led her.

The plotters and pollsters were all there bowing and scraping with answers for every fart she let go. The security of trusting them was greater than trusting her own [preferable] ballsy Lateline cross-swording with Abbott and all comers over the past 10 years. There was no rapier dismissal of the blokes as “the poodle” there; just fembot soothing of the miners and people in western Sydney fed to her.

But after 2 weeks, she regained her compuser. She woke one moring, and after a particularly sensual blow job by Timmie she declared, “move over all youse, the deliberatel barren, big lobed bitch is back. the planned Julia PM that had swirled around her fantasies, and finally got enough confidence to say “fuck off Shorten and Howie, Ginger’s back. Now get out of the way before everybody gets hurt.”